Georgia

You might have noticed no blog post for last week.  Gave myself the week off.  Figured everybody knew what to expect against Alabama A&M anyway.  The Clemson game was worse than I expected, but after reviewing the game I think Clemson just played great.  Our offensive output was pretty good considering the quality of their defense, and our defense actually played OK in my opinion.  They just made some great throws and catches.

This week is absolute chaos from a prediction standpoint.  The computer rankings and predictors that I follow mostly have UGA winning by about 3 points, and give GT a 30-40% chance to win.  All things considered, I'll take those odds.  Preseason I would have been ecstatic to learn those would be our estimated odds.  However, I say its "chaos" because the computers make the predictions by evaluating all games played with equal weight.  UGA played many games this season not at full strength.  The biggest specific injury was Gurley.  With him they nearly beat Clemson at Clemson and did beat South Carolina.  Without him, they lost to Vandy and lost to Missouri at home by a couple touchdowns.  He is the kind of transcendent player who definitely changes the game.  He changes the way you defend UGA.

Adding to the chaos is Murray's injury.  First, I'd like to say that I'm sorry for the kid.  As much as I hate him and hate UGA, I would not wish that type of injury on anybody.  A torn ACL will possibly affect his draft status and NFL career.  Hopefully he will make a full recovery and get a fair chance in the NFL.  (Full disclosure: I would have wholeheartedly supported and even celebrated a lesser injury like a minor sprained ankle, that would keep Murray and/or Gurley out for just the GT game.  But this is different and I really do feel bad for him).

UGA's computer rankings are based on Murray's presence.  The computers do not know how, and in fact don't even try, to account for his absence.  So when they say UGA is supposed to win by 3 points, that is based on Murray playing, believe it or not.  Of course, its also based on Gurley playing half the games.  So the computer rankings are based on having Gurley 50% of the time and Murray 100% of the time.  UGA will in fact have Gurley at full strength but no Murray.

The Vegas line opened at 3, which is actually consistent with the computers but for the wrong reasons.  The spread is lower than it would otherwise be to account for Murray's absence.  I think it would have been somewhere like 8 to 10 with Murray.  Of course, Vegas has no idea how much to account for that either, as nobody really knows what to make of Mason.  I'm sure he is very talented.  Richt has shown the consistent ability to recruit very talented QB's and develop them.  Richt has the reputation as a good coach, and I think he is actually underrated.  He is an offensive guy and I think his strength is coaching quarterbacks.  So we can expect Mason to be a good player and know what he is doing, but its always tough to predict how a guy will respond to his first start.  Mason has been at UGA a while but only played in garbage time against UL Lafayette, Vandy, Idaho St (all 2010), Coastal Carolina, New Mexico St, and LSU (all 2011), and Appalachian St. and Kentucky (this year).  Only LSU would be considered even a mediocre team (obviously they were great but everyone else was well below average).  And that LSU game was a blow out anyway.

So this week will be the first meaningful snaps of Mason's career.  The first time he has ever taken a snap in a game that was still in doubt.  So that makes his performance very tough to predict.  I expect he will do pretty well.  Obviously I don't think he'll play as well as Murray would have but I don't think he'll play poorly.  The important thing to note, for this game and our defensive game plan, is that I expect Richt to try to make Mason's job as easy as possible.  I expect a steady does of Gurley, then some Gurley then more Gurley, and lots of play action.

Problem is, Richt is a good coach.  He will know that we expect the above, and Richt loves to run play action when he knows the other team expects run.  One of his favorite play calls is the deep ball on 1st and 10 whenever he is backed up to his own 1 yard line.  (As the offensive coordinator for FSU, he scored a 99 yard TD on Clemson in 2000 with just this play call - don't ask me why I remember this, I have personal problems.  He also hit a long TD this year on North Texas, and attempted this play on the safety against Florida.  Apparently Muschamp had that scouted as he sent a corner blitz - ordinarily a strange play call on 1st and 10 with the opponent at their own 1 yard line.  That call only makes sense if he expected Richt to run a play action pass.)  All of that is just to say that I won't be surprised if Richt runs a play action fake on the first play of the game and goes deep (or early in the game if not the very first play).  He knows we will expect Gurley to run early and often.  He might go for the jugular immediately.  Hopefully Roof knows Richt's tendencies and will guard against this somewhat.

UGA's defense should be a lot easier to predict.  To my knowledge their defense has not suffered many injury issues.  So their performance over the season should be a reasonably good indicator of how they will play tomorrow.  And their performance has been mediocre.  The computers I follow rank UGA's defense around 50-60th best nationally.  For the year they allow their opponents to score about a half point over their season average, although they do hold their opponents about 25 yards below their average (I excluded North Texas and App St. from this analysis because their season averages are created by playing teams far, far worse than UGA, and thus don't paint a real accurate picture.)  Our total offense averages are 420 yards and 31 points (excluding the FCS opponents Elon and Alabama A&M to be consistent).  So I think we can expect about 400 yards and 30 points if we play well.  We will need to avoid the turnover and penalty issues that have plagued us at times this year.   But if we do we should be able to move the ball and score on this defense.  This UGA defense is closer to 2009 and 2010 than the past 2 years.  I am more excited about this game than I've been in a while for precisely this reason.  I'm tired of watching us play a UGA defense loaded with NFL players, where 20 points is a really good offensive effort.  This defense may have some guys who will eventually make the NFL but they are not at that level right now.  So we won't have to be hoping against hope that our defense can shut down UGA.  We could potentially win a shootout against this UGA defense.

As explained in detail above, their offense will be tough to predict.  I think Mason plays well and they still score a bunch.  But it will be interesting to see if we can limit Gurley.  Roof's philosophy is to take away the run and try to make the other team one dimensional.  Can we take away Gurley even if we load up against the run?  Probably not all the way but maybe we can slow him down.  I'd rather make Mason beat us.  At any rate, I expect UGA to score at least 30 as well and maybe 40.

Bottom line - I think we can win but we will need the offense to play well and we probably need to win the turnover battle.  I expect a 38-35 kind of game if we win, and a 42-28 type of game if we lose.  Even with the injury problems, the computers (ranking based on efficiency and adjusting for quality of defenses faced) rank UGA's offense as a top 5 unit this season.  They are a really good offense.  Obviously, Murray is a key component of that so my prediction that they score a lot is based on Mason being close to that level.  Nobody really knows but we'll find out soon enough.

Go Jackets!